A PROBLEM NOT CONFINED TO THE UNITED STATES

See how one of the world’s most influential people in public affairs, communications and public relations, Daniel Yankelovich, views the world.

A PROBLEM NOT CONFINED TO THE UNITED STATES

DEMOCRACIES with capitalist economic systems like those in Japan, the United States and Europe have many features in common. One is to compartmentalize thinking about the economy as if it were an autonomous system that operated in isolation of the larger society to which it belongs. Such thinking can lead to serious miscalculations of the sort that currently threaten the social contract that now prevails in the United States.

Most economic theorists acknowledge that capitalism creates inequalities. This is a tradeoff that most Americans up to now have willingly accepted, despite the high value we place on equality. To reconcile the conflicting pulls of freedom and equality, Americans have settled on the principle of equality of opportunity as the underlying core value of democratic capitalism. Unfortunately, however, the traditional American value of seeking to “better oneself ” is beginning to show signs of erosion. This is because it is becoming increasingly difficult to realize.

For most of its history the United States has far surpassed other nations in offering its citizens genuine social mobility. That is the essential meaning of the “American dream.” Now, though, many nations surpass the United States in giving their people opportunities for bettering themselves in the sense of moving up the socio-economic ladder.

This is a truly astonishing change in America’s relative standing in the world. If it persists it will play havoc with our unwritten social contract, which condones gross inequalities only as long as everyone has a reasonable chance to compete and to win. An America in which income inequality grows inexorably while the opportunities to win through hard work and strong motivation shrink, is a nation on a sure path to trouble.

The cause of the threat to equality of opportunity in the United States is not subtle or hidden. It lies open for all to see. It is the failure of the American education system. Americans almost universally hold the belief that education is the royal road to social mobility. Faith in education is a major feature of our unwritten social contact. But the reality is that the schools are failing a huge swathe of Americans —the entire bottom half of the income scale.Tens of millions of young Americans are educationally unprepared to compete in today’s economy and society.

More than three decades ago, a national commission wrote a report on the state of the American education system called “Nation At Risk.” The report famously stated that if a foreign government had done to our education system what we ourselves had done, it would be regarded as an act of war. This is unusually vivid language for a bureaucratic report. It expressed horror and amazement at our neglect of our own education system. In the intervening three decades since this wakeup call, and despite lots of costly reforms, the state of our education system is arguably worse today than it was at the time the Nation At Risk report was issued.

That the problem is a wicked one to solve goes without saying. Teachers and their unions who get the brunt of criticism for the failure of our schools in low-income areas are justifiably resentful. They feel they are being blamed for the poverty and family instability that burden their students, and that there are limits to the abilities of teachers to counteract these fundamental obstacles.

This argument would carry more weight if the teachers’ unions who represent the teachers had clean hands. But they do not. For all too long the teachers’ unions have been part of the problem, not part of the solution. They have relentlessly put the interest of teachers (even poorly qualified ones) ahead of student well being.

Realistically, even if the teachers’ unions magically began to represent the interests of students as well as teachers, they alone cannot do what needs to be done. Nor can government by itself do what needs to be done.

The responsibility for recreating social mobility in America cannot be delegated to any one segment of society. But no segment of our society has a greater stake in finding a solution than our economic system. If democratic capitalism is to endure and maintain its vitality, our economic institutions must play a leadership role in seizing the initiative. They will do so only if and when they realize that citizen acceptance of a capitalist economy depends utterly on restoring America’s great tradition of social mobility through education. tj

Tokyo Journal columnist Daniel Yankelovich is a renowned social researcher and public opinion analyst who was born in 1924 in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned both his bachelor's degree (1946) and M.A.(1950) from Harvard University, and carried out post-graduate studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. He also holds honorary doctorates from Washington University and George Washington University largely for his work in the public sector.

He has served in the following roles: Founder, The New York Times/Yankelovich Poll now known as the New York Times/CBS Poll; Chairman, Educational Testing Service (ETS); Founding President, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics; Trustee, Brown University; Trustee, The Kettering Foundation; Fellow, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Member, Council on Foreign Relations, and Director of a number of corporate boards, including CBS; USWEST; the Meredith Corporation; Loral Space and Communications; Diversified Energies and ARKLA.

He has taught as a Research Professor of Psychology at New York University, a Professor of Psychology in the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, and a Visiting Professor at the University of California at San Diego. He was named a Distinguished Scholar at the University of California at Irvine and served as a Senior Fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.

In addition to authoring hundreds of articles and speeches, Daniel Yankelovich is the author, editor or co-author of twelve books, the most recent being Toward Wiser Public Judgment (Vanderbilt University Press, 2011). Others include Profit with Honor: The New Stage of Market Capitalism; The Magic of Dialogue; New Rules: Searching for Self-fulfillment in a World Turned Upside Down; Coming to Public Judgment; Ego and Instinct: The Psychoanalytic View of Human Nature-Revised; Beyond the Beltway: Engaging the Public in U.S. Foreign Policy; and Making Democracy Work in a Complex World, Starting with the People.

He is the recipient of The Parlin Award for his pioneering work in marketing research, the Dinerman Award of the World Association of Public Opinion Research and the Outstanding Achievement Award from the New York Chapter of the American Association of Public Opinion Research.